You can try to shut your eyes but it will not go away. Regarding various aspects and abilities you occupy different places in hierarchies. This doesn't have to

You can try to shut your eyes but it will not go away. Regarding various aspects and abilities you occupy different places in hierarchies. This doesn't have to be a crushing discovery. There's plenty you can do to improve and there also luck involved. It makes sense to go out there and shuffle your cards, generate opportunities improve compared to your past self etc. But it's undeniable that there are differences in attractiveness and personality that won't go away. You can try to live in some Disney world where everyone can become a top hero but it's not possible. Not every employee can become a manager and the a CEO. Not every man can date the women that they personally find the most attractive (taken as a "whole package", not just in physical attractiveness). Not everyone can get the best paying jobs. It's better to come to terms with this so it's not a scary thing any more. Motivational books won't tell you this, and nobody wants to be a mood killer to say it. Especially in outwardly positive cultures like America. You need to know where you are compared to your peers, and assess if you made progress. Sure tracking your progress compared to your past self is also crucial, perhaps more important day to day, but unless you understand where you are among your peers, you will misunderstand things and have wrong expectations. We are humans but also animals and are subconsciously aware of who is "above and below" us. We interact with them differently, our posture changes, our tone of voice changes, our hormones change depending on how we compare to our surrounding people. This assessment can also be off in various ways for various reasons like conscious or unconscious manipulation/persuation from others, depression etc.